Clement: Set wait-times or the courts will

Unacceptable emergency wait times.

Advertising Emergency Department Wait Times

Advertising emergency department (ED) wait times has become a common practice in the United States. Proponents of this practice state that it is a powerful marketing strategy that can help steer patients to the ED. Opponents worry about the risk to the public health that arises from a patient with an emergent condition self-triaging to a further hospital, problems with inaccuracy and lack of st...

Performing all major surgical procedures robotically will prolong wait times for surgery

This article aimed to assess the burden of scheduling major urologic oncology procedures if all cases were performed robotically and to determine whether this would increase the time a patient would have to wait for surgery. We retrospectively determined the number of prostatectomies, radical nephrectomies, partial nephrectomies, and cystectomies at a single institution for one calendar year. A...

Ready, set, wait

Ready, set, wait tem cell differentiation is all about cautious preparation, say Deborah Lang, Jonathan Epstein (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA), and colleagues. They find that a transcription factor called Pax3 sends conflicting messages: it gets stem cells ready for the differentiated state, by building up proteins used in the differentiation program, but inhibits the action of ...

The states, Congress, or the courts: who will be first to reform ERISA remedies?

Curtis Rooney's article reviews the ERISA law and it relationship to managed care. The piece continues with a review of the relevant preremption provisions and a extentivsive discussion of related U.S. Supreme Court decisions. The author discusses malpractice and design liabilities. The article concludes with a discussion of reform initiatives directed toward the ERISA preemption and damage pro...